Hair Peace

by Piers Anthony

  “Now what are we here for?” Quiti asked. She was thinking rather than physically speaking, but the convenience of the emulation was what counted. It was a rhetorical question. None of them knew exactly what they sought, but all of them knew it was overwhelming.

  “Maybe Eternity,” Gena replied.

  “I do have a notion,” Orchid said. “We seek the Future. For the news events.”

  “We do,” Quiti agreed. “But I think that is only the beginning.”

  “Let’s manifest visually as well as sonically,” Gena said. “For comfort, so that we can better focus on the mission.” She formed an image of herself as a handsome woman in her thirties, garbed in a comfortable robe that did not conceal her shapeliness. She was standing at the edge of the glade.

  Quiti followed suit, appearing with her hair now showing as hair rather than clothing. It clung to her body, outlining her curves. It was her hair that defined her, and she was glad to show it off. She stood beside her friend.

  Orchid manifested as a dark and pretty Gypsy woman, similarly shapely, as this was the human translation of how she appeared to others of her own kind. She stood on the other side of Gena. There was also a certain quality about her, like a lovely bloom, as befitted her name.

  They were all attractive females, and proud of it. Any of them could fascinate a male of their own kind with ease, and did not mind doing it as often as the mood struck. Their males really appreciated that.

  “Now, what do we each bring to this engagement?” Gena asked. “When I became both Hair and Chip, I discovered that I could dream the future with close enough accuracy to use it.” She smiled. “That is how I got my husband. I dreamed I seduced him, then went and did it physically. He never had a chance.”

  “He never wanted a chance,” Quiti said. “Any more than mine did.”

  “Or mine,” Orchid said. “Seduction of eager males is the easiest art.”

  “Now it occurs to me that my ability is a kind of precognition,” Gena said. “That may overlap your precognition, Orchid.”

  “It may,” the Ghobot agreed. “Two species of a type.”

  “I have no precognition,” Quiti said. “But my telepathy lets me borrow yours.”

  “Your telepathy is a marvelous asset,” Orchid agreed. “It is what unifies us mentally. I think with that, and Gena’s clairvoyance, we can forge a stronger sense of the future.”

  “I’m not sure that the future is precisely what we seek,” Gena said. “For our immediate mission, yes, but I suspect there is something beyond that. Is there a larger framework?”

  “There is,” Orchid said. “The future as we see it is merely an aspect of the space-time complex. I have on occasion glanced into the near past. It is all part of the larger continuum.”

  “How will the past help us with our mission?” Quiti asked.

  “Often the past clarifies the future,” Gena said. “We better appreciate the significance of what we see in the future if we understand its origin in the past.”

  “And if we grasp the mindset of those who participate in it,” Orchid said.

  Quiti nodded. “Now I can appreciate that. A general appreciation of the things and people of the world should help us see the future they make. Shall we now try for tomorrow’s newspaper headlines?”

  “We’ve done that,” Gena said. “Let’s try for next week’s headlines.”

  “Or next month's,” Orchid said.

  Quiti was surprised. “That far?”

  “Indeed. Distance is not our problem; accuracy is.”

  “Accuracy,” Quiti repeated, thoughtfully. “It occurs to me that maybe we don’t have to depend on a secondhand source, like a newspaper. At least not entirely. Could we peek at the future more directly?”

  “How do you mean?” Gena asked.

  Quiti hesitated. “I’m not quite sure, but there’s something.”

  “I know what she means,” Orchid said. “To visit a host in the future, so as to pick up the full sensual and emotional range of the event.”

  “Yes, that’s it!” Quiti agreed. “The host can read the headlines.”

  “Interesting,” Gena said. “Perhaps we can select hosts, and orient on them. But who?”

  Quiti drew a blank, but again Orchid, more experienced than she in this respect, drew it from her mind. “Ola for Quiti, Pacifa for Gena.”

  “Who?” Gena asked.

  “The lesbian couple!” Quiti exclaimed, sending a mental description. “I danced with Ola.”

  “And Pacifa is like me,” Gena agreed, picking up on it. “Except for sexual orientation. I like her.”

  “That’s two,” Quiti said. “What of you, Orchid?”

  “I am sharing the two of you as my Trio hosts. I don’t need another.”

  “One thing,” Gena said. “Will they be aware of us?”

  “Yes, if you make yourselves known,” Orchid said. “It will be like planetary hosts, only from a different time rather than a different planet.”

  “Foosha and Geezing,” Quiti said, sending information about the two Bezel 4 women. “I was in Foosha.”

  “And my daughter was in Geezing,” Gena said, assimilating it.

  “A similar association,” Orchid agreed.

  “Then let’s do it,” Quiti said. “I will orient on Foo—I mean Ola, one month hence.”

  “And I on Pacifa,” Gena agreed. “If I can figure out how to do it.”

  “No need,” Orchid said. “I know how. But I am sensing something else. Something monstrous, just beyond one month, here.”

  “Me too,” Quiti said.

  “So do we avoid it, or go for it?” Gena asked.

  “Go for it,” Quiti said. “It could be a record killing.”

  Orchid nodded. “To the monstrous, the time and place. Yield to my imperative.”

  They yielded, and suddenly Quiti was in Ola.

  Hello Ola, she thought. May I visit with you?

  The girl was startled. “Quiti! Why am I suddenly thinking of you?”

  Because I am visiting you spiritually from your past. My friend is visiting your friend. We are on an important mission. May we stay long enough to accomplish it?

  Ola looked across at Pacifa, who was washing dishes. “Yes,” Pacifa said. “Either my imagination is running riot, or I am being visited from the past by a member of the Hair Suit Embassy staff named Gena. She’s quite a gal.”

  “So is Quiti,” Ola said. “She’s the one who got us together.”

  “I know, and I thank her daily for that. I love you, Ola.”

  “And I love you, Pacifa. But I gather they are not here to experience lesbian love.”

  “They are not,” Pacifa agreed, amused.

  “This may not be nice,” Quiti said through Ola’s voice. “There is something huge and awful about to happen. We need to learn what it is, so that we can return to our own time and try to prevent it.”

  “Such as what?” Ola asked, taking back her voice.

  “Such as a big mass killing,” Gena said through Pacifa’s voice. “Or a devastating explosion.”

  “We certainly want to help stop that,” Ola said.

  There was a rumble from outside.

  “Or maybe an earthquake,” Quiti said.

  “But this is not an earthquake zone,” Pacifa said.

  They went to the window and looked out. “Oh, no!” Quiti said, appalled. A building across the street was collapsing, but that was only part of it.

  “What is that?” Ola asked, amazed.

  “It’s a wormhole Worm,” Quiti said. “A deadly creature. I thought they couldn’t exit to a planet.”

  They can exit, just as Ghobots do. When so directed.

  “That thought,” Pacifa said. “That’s not either of you.”

  “That’s Orchid Ghobot,” Quiti explained, sending a clarifying thought. “A galactic traveler who has encountered the Worms before. She is with us.”

  “Who sent the Worm here?” Ola asked. “And why?” />
  Whoever sent the Worms after my son, Orchid thought. That’s the horrendous event: the Worms are attacking your home turf.

  The Worm fired another blast, and the rest of the building collapsed into smoking rubble. It wriggled on past.

  “Where is it going?” Ola asked, horrified.

  “South,” Pacifa said.

  Suddenly Quiti understood. “City Hall. The Hair Suit Embassy. It’s gunning for us.”

  “But why?” Gena asked.

  Because you have taken in the Ghobots, Orchid thought. “By the time of this future.”

  Quiti realized it must be true. “But have they ever done that before? I mean, gone after you on a planet?”

  Not that we know of. This does seem extreme.

  There was another sound. They left the house so as to look for it.

  There was another Worm blasting through buildings a few blocks to the west. And a third to the east.

  “It’s an invasion,” Gena said.

  “But if they’re after the embassy, why not just go there directly and blast it?” Quiti asked.

  “You know the answer to that,” Gena said wryly. “The wormholes don’t always go where you want to go.”

  Quiti remembered how they had had to detour and go part of the way to the killer on foot. The Worm army must have needed a very large hole, and the closest one must have been several miles away from the Embassy. So now they were systematically blasting their way toward it, heedless of the collateral damage, if they even noticed it.

  “We’ve got to stop them!” But Quiti couldn’t think how. This was not a matter of avoiding the Worms, but of stopping them short of their target, quite another matter.

  You forget; you don’t stop them physically. You stop them by removing the target before they strike.

  “Those are my friends out there!” Ola cried, wresting control of her body from Quiti and running toward the closest Worm as it oriented on another house. “Shoo! Shoo go away!”

  “Ola!” Pacifa said. “Stay away from it!”

  Too late. The Worm evidently heard her. Its snout whipped about and a jet of energy shot out. It caught the girl squarely, incinerating her.

  Quiti woke in her own body in the Embassy, transfixed by horror not for herself but for Ola, who had foolishly sacrificed her life.

  Then Gena returned, and Orchid.

  “I told Pacifa we’d unhappen it,” Gena said. “Because we have a month to do so. If we can’t stop the Worm raid, we can at least go back to an interim time and warn them. Ola won’t die.”

  “Thank you,” Quiti said. Then she dissolved into tears. This experiment had abruptly become savagely personal.

  Later they discussed it in more detail. “Someone will send the Worms to wipe us out,” Gena said. “I don’t think it can be just because we sheltered a Ghobot or two. The Ghobots simply aren’t that important on a galactic scale. There has to be another reason.”

  “I agree,” Orchid said. “We have been persecuted before, but never in this manner. Something else is occurring.”

  “But what else could it be?” Quiti asked. “The only thing that has changed recently is the arrival of two Ghobots.”

  “This is true,” Orchid said. “But there may be another aspect. That is the Trio. The three of us have combined to discover a way to explore the future in greater distance and detail than before. That is potentially quite significant.”

  “It is,” Gena agreed thoughtfully. “Our recent excursion will enable us to foil the Worm invasion, or at least save some lives, because now we know when and where it will come.”

  “It may be more than that,” Orchid said. “We may be developing a mental technology of discovery that could change the future enormously. If there are entities already using such techniques, they may be hostile to such development in other minds.”

  “Like Earth’s nuclear powers being hostile to new nuclear powers on Earth, Quiti said. “They might well strike preemptively before those new powers developed enough to do it back to them.”

  “They might indeed,” Gena said. “That does make sense. But the big question remains: Who?”

  “I do not know,” Orchid said. “But it occurs to me that you, Gena, are unique in one manner: you are the only creature extant who possesses three cultures.”

  “Question?”

  “You are Human. Also Hair. Also Chip. That is three. I have not known of anyone in the galaxy with three, though of course my knowledge is not complete.”

  Gena shrugged. “The combination does seem to have given me my future dreaming ability. Regular Humans, Hairs, or Chips can’t do it, so it must be a frisson, an effect of overlapping.”

  “Or an emergent quality,” Orchid said. “It is possible that dreams are only the beginning of your ability.”

  “I suppose. But I have no idea what else there might be.”

  “Let’s assume for the moment that there is more. And that when you merge with Quiti and with me, there is more yet. That this is something like your world’s nuclear power. Something potentially quite dangerous to others. That might cause some other power to make a preemptive strike to eliminate it.”

  Quiti saw it. “Before it becomes complete, because after that it’s too late.”

  “Exactly,” Orchid said.

  “But that would mean that we are not merely trying to prevent the Worm strike,” Gena said, “but that we are actually the cause of it.”

  The three of them gazed at each other with an expanding surmise. Could their innocent melding have galactic ramifications? That was awesome—and scary.

  “I think we had better figure this out right now,” Quiti said. “Our lives may depend on it.”

  “They may indeed,” Orchid agreed. “That future Worm strike is our warning. We have the advantage of knowing it is coming. This is our avenue of opportunity to save ourselves and possibly our several species.”

  “I agree,” Gena said. “But how?”

  “Dream.”

  “But we’ve already done the dream of the Worm invasion. I think the best we can do is to warn others of it, if they’ll listen.”

  “No,” Quiti said. “This may be like the genie who grants the peon one wish. The dull one wishes for fame, fortune, or the perfect romantic partner. The smart one wishes for a hundred more wishes.”

  “That loophole was closed after the first telling of the story,” Gena said. “You can’t chop up a wish without ruining it.”

  “Figurative,” Quiti said. “My point is that we need to find a truly superior wish, such as for universal enlightenment. Or in this case, a more informative dream.”

  “A dream of enlightenment,” Gena agreed. “That does make sense.”

  “But with us included,” Orchid said. “We all need enlightenment.”

  “Then let’s do it.” Gena settled into her chair and extended her hand, and Quiti took it as she settled into her own chair. Orchid wrapped around their link.

  Soon they were back in the timeless glade, which seemed to be their joint home base. They were the three appealing women. “This time we are not seeking the future,” Orchid said. “We seek enlightenment.”

  “Are we looking for other hosts?” Quiti asked.

  “I think not,” Gena said. “Hosts may be too limiting to some particular place or time. We need to be free to range anywhere.”

  “As long as we do it together,” Orchid said.

  “But just asking for enlightenment doesn’t seem specific enough,” Quiti said. “We need to orient on something more tangible.”

  “The source,” Gena said. “The root cause of our problem. Understand that, and we may be on the way to discovering what we need.”

  “The source,” Orchid agreed. “Clear our minds, except for that. Then go into our discovery state.”

  They did. Then they were flying, the three of them like misty sylphs, up out of the glade, the forest, into the upper atmosphere and on into space beyond the planet. Then into deep space, beyond th
e sun, and beyond the galaxy. They were going somewhere, with no notion where or when. They weren’t using the existing wormhole crevices, but floating along beside them. It was as if they were fashioning their own crevices, in the dream.

  They came to a fractured planet where the crevices of the wormholes overlapped those of the globe’s core. There tiny worms were evolving, gaining in both size and crevice proficiency. In only a few million years they learned to travel the crevices of the universe as readily as those of the material realm. They developed belches that had the force of furnaces and served as weapons of aggression. Finally they grew to massive size and came to govern any wormholes they chose. Other travelers learned to avoid them.

  But some others fought back, clearing regions of Worms. That was annoying. In the course of further eons the Worms developed countermeasures that were increasingly effective. The normal Worm had no need of intelligence beyond a minimal level, but there came to be a superior mother Worm who, if not actually smart, had other abilities that compensated. Such as perceiving the nexi of space/time, those critical points where reality itself could be modified if correctly nudged. She was Wonder Worm, and she labored assiduously to forward the Worm interest by touching a nexus to alter the reality of any competing culture.

  Quiti, Gena, and Orchid drew back and consulted. “The Worm raid on the embassy—to eliminate us?”

  “That’s too crude,” Gena said. “That’s just blasting away physical structures.”

  “Why do they bother,” Quiti asked. “Why be crude, when they can touch a nexus and eliminate us without a trace of our ever existing?”

  “Excellent question,” Orchid said. “Maybe changing reality is complicated and fraught with unintended side effects, such as the possible elimination of friends and allies, so they do it only as a last resort. For most purposes, a Worm raid suffices.”

  Gena and Quiti nodded. That did seem to make sense.

  “But now that we have anticipated the Worm raid, and done some spot research of our own so as to learn of Wonder Worm, it won’t be long before she catches on and comes after us. We could soon be in trouble.”

  The fabric of space/time shivered around them. A monstrous figure appeared, of a Worm six feet in diameter and long in proportion.